Creepy Crawlies
by Dasha Feather
Summary: Apparently the Doctor aims to please people. People who, at the moment, were most certainly not her. Ten/Rose. Fluff.


**Title:** Creepy Crawlies (1/1)  
**Characters:** Ten/Rose  
**Rating:** PG  
**Genre:** Fluff, humour  
**Spoilers:** No  
**Disclaimer:** Doctor Who © BBC.  
**Summary:** _Apparently the Doctor aims to please people. People who, at the moment, were most certainly not her._

_--_

"You must be kidding me," Rose mutters under her breath as a large plate is placed in front of her. A large plate, she might add, that contains certain… _things_ that should only ever be seen in jungles on the forest floor.

"Rose," the Doctor's voice is nervous and low, carrying a warning. His finger pokes at her under the table.

Opposite them both, an alien _(who Rose has forgotten the name of already but has decided could easily be a giant penguin in a man's body)_ is looking over at the both of them curiously. "Something is not wrong, is it?" he _(it?)_ asks in a surprisingly calm voice.

"Wrong?" the Doctor chirps immediately. "No! Course not. Not wrong at all, this. In fact this… this looks…" He glances down at the plate in front of him. "This… looks delicious, doesn't it Rose?"

Rose glares at him, deciding not to comment on that. Apparently the Doctor aims to please people. People who, at the moment, were most certainly not her. The penguin-man goes back to his own meal, though still frowning considerably. He picks up the insects on his plate, but Rose looks away before she can see him put it in his mouth.

"There is no _way_ I'm eating that," she hisses at the Time Lord in a whisper.

"Rose, you can't decline! It would upset the host," he nods to the penguin man opposite them, "and besides, these are a _delicacy_ here."

Rose snorts as quietly as she can. "Right, a _delicacy_. Well, if they're such a delicacy here, Doctor, then you eat one." She nods at his plate of the small bug-like things. He shrugs and picks one of the strange insects up. "Oh god," Rose mutters as quietly as she can. "Wait, I changed my mind. You don't have to eat one… really. Don't, Doctor."

He looks at her oddly, insect halfway to his mouth. "Actually I do." He looks nervously away then, eyeing the alien opposite them warily. "See I kind of forgot… the punishment for not applying to certain traditions – like having these Alioss bugs for dinner – is, um, death. So it's really quite necessary we eat them all."

Rose's glare is as hard as stone as she listens. There is a pause before she speaks, but when she does the whisper carries enough force to make him look quickly away. "No way."

Opposite, a penguin-lady comes to sit beside the penguin-man – the alien's wife according to the Doctor. She starts eating straight away and Rose feels another need to look away.

"Come on, Rose," the Doctor mutters with a sigh. "First time for everything and all that. You don't know you don't like it until you try it. Besides, I don't know what you're so worked up about – people eat things like spiders all the time in your culture after all."

Rose stares at him. "That's a lie if ever I heard one. No one in London ever ate anything like this." She nods at the plate, then pauses. "Well, except a boy at my school called Robby Brown who ate worms, but he was a bit of a nutter to be honest."

The Doctor sighs as if she's being deliberately difficult. "It's true," he tells her. "When you're sleeping as well. The average person eats around eight spiders in their lifetime – in their sleep."

Rose shakes her head, eyeing him under drawn brows. "You're lying."

"I'm not!" he insists. "They're not huge spiders, mind. I'm not sure you even notice, but they do–"

"You can stop," Rose says quickly, "right there." She raises her eyebrows at him.

"Alright, fine," he mutters, looking back down at the plate and admitting defeat. "I'll stop talking about spiders. But you still have to eat your Alioss."

--

"Now was that so bad?" the Doctor chirps, hopping around the console of the TARDIS animatedly.

"Was it good?" Rose mutters, the frown she'd been supporting since they left that planet still on her face.

"Well," the Doctor shrugs thoughtfully, "it might not have been as good as some dishes I suppose, but I thought it was a bit better than say, your mother's cooking, or..."

Rose glares at him.

"_Or_," he backtracks quickly. "Maybe it _was_ bad. Terribly bad. Absolutely awful, and your mother's cooking is some of the best… _food_ I shall ever consume, _and_ very, very much better than the Alioss." He gives her one of his best hopeful smiles.

Rose simply rolls her eyes and goes over to join him at the controls. She doesn't smile, only fiddles with a control she knows she shouldn't be fiddling with and pouts a lot.

"Oh, Rose," the Doctor sighs overdramatically as he watches her. "Don't be like that. Think of the positives – and don't touch that by the way, not unless you want us both to die a terribly inadequate death."

"Positives?" Rose says with quirked eyebrows as she ignores the latter of his sentence. "What's positive? Those bugs tasted like weeds. Only worse." She shakes her head and then considers something. "Well alright, we didn't die I suppose. They didn't kill us."

"That they didn't," the Doctor says as he flicks switches, but there is something in his voice to make her frown and look over at him.

"Doctor," she says slowly.

He blinks at her, acting innocent. "What?" he says, but a smile slips.

"You!" she says suddenly. "You are such a liar!"

He backs away a little, though a smile still shows. "Well I had to say something to make you eat them! You weren't going to try them!"

"Doctor, I'm gonna kill you!" she says loudly; she's trying to be angry, but even she can feel the laughter in her at the ridiculousness of it all.

That doesn't mean he shouldn't be taught a lesson any less, of course. She'll certainly make sure of that.

_fin_


End file.
